Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

This is where it all begins: the first one in a long string of books connecting some of the very best works of science fiction ever published. Seeing that Bantam is reprinting them in hardcover, I couldn't resist the purchase and the inevitable re-read. Perhaps in the absence of anything else that compares to Asimov's writings, I'll just have to make my way through all the Foundation, Empire, and Robots novels again. And that would, I'm sure, be just as exhilarating as reading them all for the first time.

Foundation sets the universe for long-range explorations into a fictional science called psychohistory and into how the human race eventually would spread throughout the entire galaxy. The book is divided into five inter-connected stories: The Psychohistorians, The Encyclopedists, The Mayors, The Traders, and The Merchant Princes. The stories do form a whole evolving from the first to the next painting the picture of a sequence of events from the detection that humanity was about to revert to barbarism to the machinations of a group determined to not allow all the knowledge developed by the race end up lost for millenia.

The first story serves as a brief introduction to the science of psychohistory and its creator, Hari Seldon. We are told that this science evolved from the social psychology, the statistics, and the history of large populations. The framework allows one to plug into a mathematical model a socio-historical context and track (or forecast) its evolution through time. This story whets one's appetite for more details on Seldon, on Trantor (the planet at the center of the Galactic Empire), and psychohistory. It can be quite unsatisfying in that for as soon as the background for the Foundation universe is set up, the story ends and we're moved along to another set of characters, in a far off place, and in a very different predicament. The patient and faithful Asimov reader, however, should note that the story comes back full circle to this very point in Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, Asimov's final novels before his death.

The gist of the novel as a whole is that the psychohistorians are able to predict that the advanced Galactic Empire is about to come to an end. Sectors of the galaxy, or planetary systems alone, are about to break away from the Empire, starting a processes of constant fighting and of the decay of science and innovation. Eventually, the bulk of the knowledge produced at hard pains by the human race could be lost and a dark age encompassing many millenia would ensue. Psychohistory, however, can also foresee a set of actions, which carried out with precise timing, could potentially reduce the length of this dark period in history. The five stories carry the reader along the events in this "master plan" to put humanity back on track. Each story showcases the applicability of a different "force" to promote the evolution of the plan (political, religious, commercial, or diplomatic) well-tuned to the correct historical moment.

No honest enthusiast of good science fiction should pass up this book, or this series. This is really "creme de la creme".

Hybrids, by Robert J. Sawyer

Oh, boy. Why did I do this to myself? This series went through ups and downs (actually, downs mostly), but I had some faith that Sawyer would manage to redeem himself in the end. Well, it didn't really happen. I didn't find much science in this fiction. This book was the olive on the martini Sawyer had been stirring all along: a preachy book based on some interesting ideas that could have otherwise been developed into something really outstanding but didn't. In the end, the feeling I experienced somewhere along the earlier books of the Neaderthal Parallax trilogy hit me hard in the face: this read like a soap opera on scientific steroids. The material on human relationships was far too trite to be engaging and convincing.

You may want to read my comments on Hominids and Humans for more details on the series. Suffice it to say that this book evolves into an unfulfilling exploration of topics such as faith, sexuality, the societal development of Homo sapiens as a species, and "the evil that men do" (yup, reference to the old Iron Maiden song). The climax is quite pathetic and wraps up a muder mystery that the attentive reader can spot coming from miles away. The best about the way the book ends is that it ends. What disappoints me the most is that Sawyer seems to be taking a dangerous turn away from writing solid science fiction to writing pop-scifi in the style of Michael Crichton. This would have been ok for a summer, beach book, but no more. Where it will end, I hope not to find out. When I read Sawyer again, I'll make sure to look for titles from his back-catalogue.

The Wave, by Todd Strasser

Once upon a time, back when I was a teenager... there was this TV movie about an experiment carried out in a high school in California. During a discussion of WWII, a history teacher is confronted with his class' incredulity over the fact that the Nazi Party managed to convince an entire nation to participate, mostly unknowingly, in a movement that resulted in genocide. The teacher goes about to show his class that not only this was possible, but also that it could happen again. He carries out an experiment that almost spirals out of his control easily creating a fascist movement that grows to engulf almost the entire school.

This short novel is about the real event. I picked it up in hopes that it would explore the issues much more deeply than the movie and was very disppointed to discover that it doesn't. The writing style is easy, almost too easy. It seems to me that this was not written for a mature audience, but rather for young adults, that crowd between 12 and 16 years of age. An adult would soon discover that, although there are indeed important lessons to learn from the experiment in fascism, this book fails to explore them in deeper and significant ways. This book is no more than the movie and actually reads like the novelization of the screenplay. It's marginally an ok read, but in the end, it doesn't satisfy.

December Heat, by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

This is a brilliant mystery. (Since Portuguese is my mother tongue, of course I had to read the original "Achados e Perdidos" and, therefore, this review does not refer to the English translation.)

In Rio de Janeiro, an ex-policeman gets overly drunk during an outing with his girlfriend, and loses his wallet on the way out of a restaurant. Next morning, he wakes up at home without any recollection of the past night's events; he can't remember driving home and he can't locate a couple of personal items like his belt or his wallet. In the meanwhile, his girlfriend, a prostitute, is found dead by asphixiation all tied up to her own bed, in her own apartment. A street urchin finds the lost wallet and, discovering that it belongs to a cop, throws it out again after lifting out the money inside. The wallet is picked up by a low-life man, who proceeds to pose as a policeman (using the identification encountered) to extort money from drug dealers and other criminals. Other murders follow and the lives of several people seem to become interlinked to the first murder and to the lost wallet, but the connections are tenuous and uncertain. In order to figure out all that really happened, the reader has to keep going all the way until the very last line, which wraps the novel masterfully with a bang.

Detective Espinosa, a "carioca" version of Hercule Poirot, sets out to investigate the crime and what follows is a twisty story through the underground of The Wonderful City, Rio de Janeiro. Garcia-Roza is a master at characterizing the locale and its ambience in the smallest details. His novels are a true delight for expatriates like me who can vizualize every street corner he mentions. I imagine that his writings may not have the same effect on those who are not as familiar with the city, but even if this picture is more vague in their minds' eyes, it is still mysterious, seductive, and downright alluring, and, in all that, it is faithful to Rio.

It can be said that after this book, I became a fan of this author.

Introducing Kafka, by David Zane Mairowitz and Robert Crumb

I've been reading Kafka on and off for a few years and I've always felt intrigued, amused, and terrified, all at once, by his stories. Stumbling on this little book in a bookstore, I was first attracted by the illustrations by Robert Crumb, which by themselves, would have made this intellectual comic book very interesting. I had built up no expectations on the writing and I was delighted to find what a great job it does at putting Kafka's work in the context of his persona, his time, and the history of his country.

Those who already enjoy Kafka will find that this book sheds light into the dark, unexplained corners of his stories without aiming to explain his artwork. I felt that what Mairowitz and Crumb attempted to do was to motivate discussion and provoke the reader to find a meaning in Kafka's stories. It is hard, if not impossible, to go beyond the shock and the horror or perhaps to find any meaning in Kafka's work without an attempt to understand the conditions that motivated his writings. Those who have never read Kafka will enjoy this book for a terrific introduction to many fastastic and bizarre stories and hopefully will feel motivated to read them in their original format. Finally, those who simply enjoy brainy comics will not be disappointed by the terrific illustrations and carefully crafted text.

The High Lord, by Trudi Canavan

This is the final installment in The Black Magician's Trilogy, following The Magician's Guild and The Novice. Although it is somewhat entertaining, I found it disappointing, what didn't really surprise me after the first two installments in the series. There is definitely something good to be said about the author's creativity in the main argument for the plot, but the delivery seemed terribly weak to me. The universe that the author attempted to create would have been much more interesting in the hands of a more experienced writer. In her first work, Canavan didn't manage to make it come together and feel very real. Pieces of the geography of her world and the magic system are sometimes simply thrown together and don't coalesce into a very coherent whole. All in all, when I was done, I felt like what I gained from reading this series was nearly nothing. I would much have preferred to have re-read something like Raymond Feist's "Riftwar Saga" or maybe have read Guy Gavriel Kay, of whose writings I keep hearing raving reviews.

The central theme of the story is the idea of "black magic", a kind of magic that was written off the books by the Magician's Guild for it's unbounded potential and inherent danger. "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" was the driving thought for the Guild and they thought it was best never to have their magician's learn these techniques. What they failed to consider was the possibility that not all magicians in their world would forsake this knowledge and in a far-off place it still thrives. The magicians from this nation, motivated by one with the need for a personal vendetta, then launch an all-out attack on the Guild.

The argument is interesting and I believe that it could have been turned into a terrific story in the hands of a more experienced writer. As The Black Magician's Trilogy turned out to be, however, the opportunity for an interesting discussion was lost and the result is so shallow that, at best, only the young-adult readership will find it satisfying. I was very annoyed also by the fact that the story ends abruptly, with a good measure of loose threads, which were certainly left unresolved so that sequels can be written. In my opinion, that is not the way to build up and captivate a readership and perhaps a good, experienced editor would have steered the author away from this marketing ploy. I guess Canavan was out of luck in that department.

The Novice, by Trudi Canavan

This book was much more enjoyable than the first one in the trilogy, The Magician's Guild. The story finally started to take shape and it left the underground tunnels that gave the first book a cheap RPG feel.

Although it may be an unfair comparison, the book seems to follow the well-established Harry Potter dynamics (or dare I say, formula?). The protagonist is a magician novice, in a larger-than-life school, in a universe of different magical disciplines, facing bullies lead by an arch-enemy that feels a lot like what's-his-face from Slitherin. It's not a whole lot less fun, but it doesn't smell very original.

All in all, there are many more qualities to this book than to the first in the trilogy. I've been actually scratching my head and wondering if the series was inflated by an entire additional volume just because fantasy series are most often trilogies... nuff speculation.

Even though I rate this book as an empty fun read, it was fun nonetheless. There's quite a bit of social critique in the discussion of how elitist the Magician's Guild is. There is also a seemingly gratuitous discussion of gender issues. Perhaps the concluding book explains how that discussion is relevant to the story; there is no denying, however, that in the context of this book alone, it feels like the author has taken the opportunity to climb on a soapbox.

Ok, so what is the spiel? Sonea, a poor slum dweller, discovers by accident that she has powerful magical talent. In the first book, the Magician's Guild, an organization that holds a tight monopoly on the training and use of magical talent, seeks her out and offers her entrance in their school. This second volume talks of her evolution as a magician novice, but more importantly, of her discovery that the head of Guild is a user of a forbidden form of magic, black magic.

As I said before, this volume reads much better than the first and is fairly enjoyable (no random acts of extreme violence as in Terry Goodkind's opus). Character development is decent enough to make you start caring for them. The one annoying matter of style is the author rubbing on the readers' faces all the "questions" that go through a character's mind. The author seems prone to frequently throw the reader's way several questions in a row in order to outline a character's thought process: "Would she really consider leaving the Guild? Well, she didn't want to join them in the first place. Then again, what will she do if she leaves? Will she simply accept to have her magical powers taken away? etc, etc, etc" I believe that the author overuses this technique, which at times is almost Hollywoodian in that it leaves nothing for the reader's intelligence to work out.

These gripes aside, though, I actually enjoyed this one enough to continue reading the series. Now, on to The High Lord.